Archive for October, 2010

On a late-night dog walk I heard the sound of running water where there shouldn’t have been. I didn’t have a flashlight and the area was dark, but eventually I located a new stream running down a hill into a nearby baseball field. This definitely wasn’t right… I followed the stream up to its source and found, in the middle of a parking lot, a 2-foot diameter hole with water coming out of it. Of course, the dog was thrilled and started drinking out of it, because he has to sample all new water sources.

I called the non-emergency police number and they sent the fire company out to look at it – only ten minutes later! They confirmed that it was a water main of some sort and we all went home. I knew that somewhere in town, water department authorities were getting an unwanted phone call: “Guess what you’re doing tonight?”

The next morning I walked over and found them repairing it. I had a nice talk with one of the water guys about typical patterns of pipe breakage and what makes them break in the first place. They had it fixed and were done by shortly after lunch. This place really gets business done! You can see the repair in the second picture – the shiny part with bright blue hardware. It’s an industrial version of a standard pipe patch – a metal strap with rubber on the inside, and it’s tightened over the break to stanch the flow.